Governance, Risk and Compliance

Most law firms are governed under a partnership model, even when in effect they are formally structured differently. The Governance Model should be aligned with the strategic priorities. We can help you designing the right structure to optimize strategy, culture, growth and development of the firm. We can also advise on how a profit distribution model facilitates and stimulates activities and (desired) behaviour. This includes an important part that is often overlooked, the retirement of older partners and the successful transfer of practices and clients to the next generation. 

Lawyers are experts in the management of legal risk, as it is their profession. That being the case, Risk Management as a corporate function (so inside the law firm) has a much broader scope. This is where you need to consider not only IF something is a risk, but also its likelihood and its relevance to the business. What is the risk in clients and matter intake ? Are there financial risks ? Do you handle third party monies ? We advise on how to structure risk management across the legal practice. Because reputation comes on foot, but leaves on horseback.

In today’s world, Compliance is all across the financial and legal sector. Money laundering, sanctions, source of funds, PEP’s, blacklists, tax evasion, are part of the client business vocabulary. We can help you design compliance processes and set up your procedures. We advise about internal controls, forms and workflows and integrating rules in your systems. We can help with training and awareness to improve the culture around risk.

Many organisations struggle with unclear governance. Who can decide or approve what and what is the process? We help you clarify governance structures, better guide the business and build more robust processes for decisions and approvals, and help clarify roles and responsibilities in governance. New organisational models, with distributed responsibilities and self-governed teams and a business that is accelerating and in constant change, also make governance increasingly difficult. We help you navigate such challenges, and help you embed governance into business operations and systems to ensure robustness despite organisational change.

It is challenging to implement robust Enterprise Risk Management, with adequate alignment on risk tolerance and risk classifications and prioritisation and clear roles and responsibilities that enable transfer of ownership and accountability to business to manage risk day-to-day. We help you build the right structures, operationalise risk management processes and governance structures and align different parts of the organisations that work with risk. We help you prioritise the truly business critical risks and identify and address emerging risks, to apply a more strategic approach to risk.

Implementing robust Compliance Management programs is hard, especially to ensure clear roles and responsibilities that transfer ownership and accountability to business to manage compliance day-to-day. We help you build the right structures, embed compliance management in business operations and governance structures and align different parts of the organisation that work with compliance. We help you apply a more strategic approach to compliance, by prioritising critical compliance area and identifying emerging compliance risks and opportunities.

Brand reputation and ethical business is a must to secure trust from customers, employees and other stakeholders. We help you clarify roles and responsibilities between different parts of the organisation involved and set the role for central forums tasked to oversee and coordinate work. We can also help you to set up necessary documents, routines and other support for both preventive work and response capabilities.